Re: html dir links, table summary

[Gavin Smith]

On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 11:35 PM, Karl Berry <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Kurt - I'm cc-ing my colleagues at texinfo-devel, so will include
> your original msg and intersperse my replies.
>
>     Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 11:14:19 +0100
>     From: Kurt Hornik <address@hidden>
>     To: address@hidden (Karl Berry)
>     Subject: Texinfo to HTML conversion problems
>
>     [...]
>     I recently tried the effect of running linkchecker on our R-project and
>     CRAN web pages, which as you know contain HTML versions of the R manuals
>     obtained from their texinfo sources.
>
>     This complains about invalid dir.html links in the top menus, which by
>     default contain something like
>
>     <div class="header">
>     <p>
>     Next: <a href="#Preamble" accesskey="n" rel="next">Preamble</a>, 
> Previous: <a href="dir.html#Top" accesskey="p" rel="prev">(dir)</a>, Up: <a 
> href="dir.html#Top" accesskey="u" rel="up">(dir)</a> &nbsp; </p>
>     </div>
>
>     Now in Texinfo 5.2 I can set the configuration variable TOP_NODE_UP_URL
>     to empty to get rid of the "Up" hyperlink: but this still leaves the
>     "Previous" hyperlink in, and I found no way to programmatically get rid
>     of this one.  Is there a way?
>
> Not that I know of.  I think it would be best if the TOP_NODE_UP_URL
> value (or some new configuration variable) replaced all occurrences of
> (dir).  It doesn't make sense to me otherwise.  I also think I may be
> forgetting the exact circumstances of my asking Patrice to create
> TOP_NODE_UP ...

Makes sense to me.

>     By the way, HTML validators give
>       Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute
>
> I think those validators are in error.  Suddenly warning about something
> that has never been (and still isn't) required?  I gather the US
> government has started recommending it in section 508.  Fine, but the
> rest of the world cannot change on a dime.
>
>     because the menu tables have no summary attribute: perhaps in
>     ./Texinfo/Convert/HTML.pm:
>        $result .= '<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
>     you could add something like summary="Menu" (perhaps with the name of
>     the node the menu is for)?
>
> Thanks for the finding the reference.  A static summary="Menu" doesn't
> seem useful to me, but with the name of the node, I suppose it is better
> to do it than not.

If I understand correctly a table summary is to give someone using a
screen reader some idea of what is being read out so they are not
confused by suddenly hearing a bunch of random numbers or other table
content with no idea what it means. It doesn't seem necessary in this
case because the menu entries are self-explanatory.